Nurtured in the Ozarks, an opera career flourishes

Michael Spyres has become a world-class singer with help and hard work

Dec. 7, 2012

Michael Spyres stands outside Carnegie Hall on Wednesday in New York beneath the poster announcing 'Beatrice di Tenda,' about an hour before he would perform in the opera in concert as the lead tenor. / Helmut Fischer

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For the News-Leader

Michael Spyres performing onstage. / Silvia Lelli

Michael Spyres in the 2012 production of 'La Damnation de Faust' by Terry Gilliam at the Vlaamse Opera in Antwerp, Belgium. The character of Faust was based on the German scientist Fritz Haber and the production compressed almost 100 years of German history. / Helmut Fischer

Tara and Michael Spyres perform together in a 2011 SRO Lyric Theatre production of 'La Boheme.' / R. Brannon Estis

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Forged from traditional Ozarks materials, tempered under the guidance of parents and fine teachers, sharpened in Europe, finishing on the great stages of the world —

Michael Spyres, the Mansfield native who began singing before he could speak, said he’s had an ideal upbringing for an international career as an operatic tenor soloist.

In November, Opera Today, a leading website for the field, proclaimed him a “star ascendant” in a written piece.

On Wednesday, he performed the role of Orombello in Bellini’s “Beatrice di Tenda” at Carnegie Hall. It was his fourth performance at the historic concert space, but it never gets old, he said.

“It was an amazing experience to know that all of the heroes I have ever had in the history of opera in the last 100 years were standing exactly where I was singing,” Spyres said Thursday from New York. “It’s a pretty amazing feeling that I have made it to this point, and I couldn’t be happier with life.”

His journey to Carnegie Hall and beyond began with family performances in community theater productions in Mansfield, notably his mother’s long-running musical inspired by the life of Laura Ingalls Wilder. He studied at Missouri State University, sang in productions of SRO Lyric Theatre and Springfield Little Theatre, then ventured to Europe and studied at the Vienna Conservatory. Since 2006, he has pursued a busy performing schedule, mostly in Europe.

Like the von Trapps

Eric and Terry Spyres, both career music educators, met as students at Beacon Hill Summer Theater at what was then School of the Ozarks. He played French horn in the pit, and she acted onstage. After they married and settled in Mansfield, Terry Spyres started raising the children in song.

She cast the family in productions at the theater she started, and the family sang at many social gatherings around town. Comparisons to “The Sound of Music” were unavoidable.

“They’re working as a unit,” Terry Spyres said. “I thought, why not bring them up like the Von Trapps?” Her husband was the vocal and music mentor, and she was the acting coach.

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Michael Spyres said his parents encouraged him and his siblings to pursue anything they wanted in life, saying, “You just have to go toward your passion, and the rest will follow,” he wrote last week in an interview conducted by email because of his travel schedule and need for vocal rest.

Michael Spyres and his mother emphasized that the support of the people of Mansfield was crucial to the family’s musical development, with wide-ranging results, including:

• Terry Spyres, along with her college roommate Pat Allen, created the musical “Laura’s Memories,” heading into its 23rd year.

• Michael Spyres’ brother Sean sings opera and other forms, and his sister Erica acts in musicals and serious theater in the Boston area.

• Michael Spyres’ wife, Tara Stafford-Spyres, will play the lead in SRO’s “La Traviata” in March, and the couple will sing in two projects in Germany in 2013.

• The couple performed together in the 2011 SRO production of “La Boheme” — along with his brother, father, mother, sister in-law, nephew and niece.

Hard work and high goals

Michael Spyres not only was raised like a Von Trapp child, he also played one onstage at age 10 with Jeff Carney, who played Captain Von Trapp in the 1990 Little Theatre production of “The Sound of Music.”

Carney, now SRO board president, has heard Spyres develop over the years from soprano to baritone and through a challenging transition to tenor. “He has a lyric tenor voice with a baritone underpinning, which gives him a depth of sound that very few tenors have,” Carney said.

“He found, from listening to himself and others, the core, the technique that he wanted from his own voice,” Carney said. “He’s one of the hardest workers I’ve ever known.”

Voice teacher Robert Mirshak’s insight that his student’s true range was tenor commenced an intensive five-year process of change. Michael Spyres described the adventure:

“For three years he taught me techniques on how to sing a natural and properly produced sound, which I was not quite doing as a baritone. … After we stopped lessons when I was 21, I realized that it was all on me to learn this new way of singing. I would record my voice every day and listen to as many recordings as I could. I would then analyze the inconsistencies in how I was singing in comparison to the best singers on recordings.

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“It was very hard to give up the sensations of singing as a baritone since the resonant frequencies are more in the chest rather than in the head, as with the tenor voice. Once I was able to embrace this feeling of lack of control associated with the tenor voice, my career started to flourish.”

In Springfield, he learned under two more influential teachers, Jane Munson-Berg and Guy Webb, and performed with SRO, where he has played eight roles and sung in 11 operas. “Most people have to wait until after graduate school at age 25 to start performing with professional opera companies, but I was lucky to have grown up in an area where I could perform and gain hands-on experience,” he wrote.

To forge a career in opera, Spyres knew he had to move to Europe to learn languages and repertoire and further his studies.

“I saved up about $1,500 and decided no matter what I am going to move to Europe,” he wrote. With English as his only language, he went to Vienna, where he had friends, and gained admittance to the Vienna Conservatory. “For four years I really struggled to get by, but I was determined to do what I set out to do, and it paid off.”

His performing schedule requires him to stay on the road for eight to nine months out of the year, traveling among eight different nations and speaking in four languages.

“This lifestyle can take its toll on you mentally and physically, but fortunately I have a wonderful wife, a supportive family and amazing friends to help me in everything,” he wrote.

Michael Spyres’ schedule for 2013 includes performances at elite European opera houses, including London’s Covent Garden, Vlaamse Opera in Antwerp and Liceu in Barcelona.

In addition to his work in Europe, Carney said he’d like to see Spyres become a star in the United States, playing at the Metropolitan Opera, Chicago Lyric Theater and the Santa Fe Opera. He’s already working on that, listing among his engagements in future seasons a debut at Lyric Opera Chicago as Alfred in Die Fledermaus.

Spyres reflected on the accolades he’s receiving:

“I am very honored to have people like what I do. The last few years have been quite a validation for all of those previous years of hard work. I do feel a bit of pressure to keep reaching higher, but to be honest, most of that is from myself. I want to be the best opera singer I can, and I hope people in turn like the art that I try to create.

“This being said, I can honestly say that, if something happens to me or my voice, I would be a happy and fulfilled man who got to achieve everything I ever wanted to, and now the rest is a wonderful bonus!”